Oscar Wilde’s first play confronts the hypocrisy of public ‘morality’ compared with genuine, private kindness. When it opened in 1892, Lady Windermere’s Fan was an instant success and now, a century later, it continues to be revived frequently. The reasons for its popularity are not difficult to identify the play’s witty dialogue contains many of Wilde’s most quoted aphorisms, its stylish setting provides opportunities for elegant presentation, and its cast of memorable characters play out a story which is genuinely moving. This new audiobook production brings together a cast worthy of Wilde’s creative genius.

Oscar
Fingall O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin on October 16, 1854. His father was a distinguished surgeon and his
mother a poet. After attending TrinityCollege in Dublin, Wilde won a scholarship to MagdalenCollege, Oxford in 1874, where he took first class honours and was awarded
the Newdigate Prize for poetry.

At Oxford
Wilde, under the influence of the critics Walter Pater and John Ruskin and the
painter James McNeill Whistler, espoused the ideals of the “aesthetic’
movement, which asserted the importance of art in society and its power to
influence the progress of civilization. Wilde’s wit, his extravagant modes of
dress, his attitude of contempt for traditional sports and energetic pursuits,
caused hum to be seen as an effeminate poseur by his more reactionary fellow
students, and resulted in his receiving a ducking in the Cherwell and his rooms
being wrecked.

Having
moved to London, Wilde’s handsome looks and
brilliant conversation soon established his position in society. His long hair,
velvet coat and flowing tie became the recognized image of the poetic aesthete,
and were parodied in Gilbert and Sullivan’s opera Patience (1881). The
following year Wilde took advantage of the opera’s success by embarking on a
lecture tour of the United
States, during which
time he wrote a play, Vera, later produced in New York.

The same
year Wilde published a selection of poems, and these were followed by The
Happy Prince and Other Stories (1888), Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and
Other Stories (1891), The House of Pomegranates (1892), The
Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), and a play, The Duchess of Padua
which was produced in New
York in 1891. His Salome
(1893) was refused a license for the London stage, and was produced in Paris by Sarah Bernhardt.

In 1884
Wilde married Constance Lloyd, by whim he had two sons, Cyril in 1885 and
Vyvian in 1886. In addition to his literary output, Wilde supplemented his
living by journalism, contributing to various popular periodicals.

In 1891
Wilde embarked on a succession of plays which were to earn him popular acclaim
and an assured place in this history of English dramatic writing; Lady
Windermere’s Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An
Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Ernest (1895).

During this
period a homosexual relationship which was to have disastrous consequences
developed between Wilde and the young Lord Alfred Douglas. Douglas’s father, the Marquis of
Queensberry, learning the nature of his son’s friendship with Wilde, publicly
insulted him, and Wilde, mistakenly as it turned out, decided to sue
Queensberry for libel. During the course of one trial at which the jury failed
to agree and a consequent re-trial, Wilde’s homosexual activities were revealed
and he was condemned to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour. While in
prison Wilde wrote a long accusatory letter to Douglas, later published as De Profundis, and a powerful
narrative poem, The Ballad of Reading Gaol. After his release Wilde
moved to Paris where he lived under a pseudonym
and died in poverty on 30 November, 1990.

In order to
appreciate the attitudes which underlie the narrative of Lady Windermere’s
Fan, it may be helpful to consider the prevailing public morality of the
era in which it was written, and the author’s own ambivalent position.

The rigid
social and religious rules of the time obliged all sexual activity outside
marriage to be carried on in secret, an attitude which resulted in the
well-known hypocrisy of the Victorian age. Sexual activity between members of
the same sex was never openly admitted; homosexuality was a criminal offence
and Wilde, in company with other practicing homosexuals, was obliged to hide
that aspect of his life.

In the case
of men, extra-marital affairs might be overlooked providing there were
conducted discreetly and did not interfere with the semblance of an orderly
social existence. But equality between the sexes, though widely discussed, was
far from being established. The rules of sexual conduct for women were
considerably stricter than those for men, and women who broke them suffered
severe consequences in terms of society’s retribution. In an age when women of
the upper classes were not expected to earn their living, and where society did
not provide any means for them to do so, there were few avenues open for a
woman without a husband or a fortune. In cases where a beautiful woman’s
determination to live well outweighed her fear of society’s opprobrium, she was
free to choose a more comfortable way of life in which her looks and ability to
please were financially rewarded by wealth admirers. But such women were
obliged to live a demimondaine existence outside the magic circle of
‘decent’ society; they might be popular in the company of men, but they would
never be received by their wives. It is into this category that Mrs. Erlynne
falls.

The theme
of Lady Windermere’s Fan is ‘goodness’; the difference between society’s
perception of what it means to be ‘good’, and true ethical goodness; between
the public stance of morality, and the private kindness of a generous nature.
Mrs. Erlynne, having left her husband and child for a lover who deserted her,
is seen by society as a ‘bad’ woman and has been punished for contravening its
laws. She is no longer accepted in respectable houses, and is obliged to travel
abroad, kept by a succession of wealthy lovers. Her heart has hardened to the
extent that she is prepared to blackmail Lord Windermere into paying her an
allowance, and forcing him to become the means of her reinstatement in
fashionable society.

Lady
Windermere is a ‘good’ woman, in the sense of being a faithful wife, a loving
mother, and a respectable member of society, but as the result of her youth,
her rigid upbringing and her limited experience of life, she lacks the true
qualities of good ness – understanding, sympathy and compassion.

Through
re-discovering her maternal feelings, Mrs. Erlynne shows herself capable of the
selfless sacrifice of true love. Lady Windermere understands that she has misjudged
Mrs. Erlynne, and discovers within herself the frailty she has condemned in
others. She learns that there are no ‘bad’ or ‘good’ people, but that the
complexity of human nature embraces all such qualities. Thus Wilde sends a
message to his audiences that those who are forced to live outside the
boundaries of ‘respectable’ society are not necessarily evil, and that those
who consider themselves without stain would do well to look deeper, and accept
the failings of others in a spirit of understanding and generosity.

In the
light of what we know of the double life Wilde was leading at the time he was
writing Lady Windermere’s Fan, it is easy to see why such sentiments lie
at the play’s heart. But sadly, once Wilde’s secret became public knowledge, it
became clear that his message had fallen on deaf ears. The cruel impulses of
human nature, those which envy beauty and talent and gate the outsider, the
same that had motivated the behaviour of his Oxford contemporaries in the past,
now caused a self-righteous establishment to heap on him a public degradation
greater than any which Mrs. Erlynne or her kind might have suffered. Overnight
Wilde, the epitome of elegant living, artistic sensitivity and witty
insouciance, the darling of theatrical audiences and fashionable drawing rooms,
became outcast, a criminal whose appearance on a Clapham Junction station
platform in prison clothes elicited jeers and catcalls from a contemptuous
crowd. Wilde had climbed high, and he had a long way to fall. There is in his
fate a sense of the hubris of Greek tragedy; as if the seeds of his undoing
were there from the beginning, and his downfall as the result of his ambition
and pride.

However,
when on the 20th February 1892, Lady Windermere’s Fan opened
at the St. James’s Theatre to rapturous applause, these tragic events were
still in the future. The play was an instant success and ran for over 150
performances. Now, a century later, it continues to be revived frequently. The
reasons for its popularity are not difficult to identify. The play’s witty
dialogue contains many of Wilde’s most quoted aphorisms, its stylish setting
provides opportunities for elegant presentation, and it achieves moments of
high emotion which are deeply moving.

It also
includes a cast of memorable characters; Lord Darlington, whose witty and
urbane exterior hides a recklessly passionate nature and may well be the
author’s self-portrait; the redoubtable Duchess of Berwick, a rewarding figure
in her own right, despite being due to reappear in the future as the even more
formidable Lady Bracknell; and Mrs. Erlynne, who brings a deeper resonance to
what might otherwise have been a superficially entertaining piece, and gives
the play another, more serious dimension.

In this
Naxos AudioBook version we are fortunate to have been able to assemble a cast
worthy of Wilde’s creative genius. I hope the listener will forgive my
pre-empting his appreciative response if I quote the author’s speech to the
audience on the first night of the play, “I think that you have enjoyed the
performance as much as I have, and I am pleased to believe that you like the
piece almost as much as I do myself.”

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